Category Archives: Shawn Christopher

I will never forget that feeling I had when I got my first bike: FREEDOM! So many childhood memories start and finish with me on that bike. It may have been an old hand me down Redline from my older brothers, but to me it was the newest and coolest wheels on the block. I was FREE! Free to go where I wanted. Free to make decisions: do I turn left, right, up the hill, or through the mud puddles. I learned to pick myself up, but only after figuring out that gravity works. I was in a bicycle gang. There were three of us. We were 9, and we ruled! I broke myself as many times as I broke that bike. Yet both of us managed to bounce back and ride another day.

I wanted these pieces to be free and wild, mixed with excitement, danger, and beauty, just like that first ride.

Fat Boy Slim changed my life. Yup, I said it. Fat Boy Slim saved me! I’ll never forget hearing him on MTV (back when they played music on MTV) for the first time. I ran to my local music shop and asked Rob, the owner, to order it for me that day. This opened the door for me that lead me to all forms of electronic music.

This collection was created using many different materials and scraps including metals, wood, bicycle and motorcycle parts and much more. Look closely and you will see a whole new element of urban warfare.

The industrial machine turns, designed to get you to spend money. The carefully crafted casino floors are awe-inspiring. The placement of every slot machine, craps table, and even the bathroom is orchestrated with science. The way the colorful floors wind like a path, taking you past bright lights, colorful people, and rolling dice. All of this was inspiration for “Viva Las Vegas”.

As a child, it was how we remembered the colors of the rainbow: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet. Much like the rainbow itself, simultaneously simple and complex, I approached these paintings accordingly.

This seven painting series consisted of a blend of geometrical shapes and line work in an array of hues of any given color to create light and dark, shadow and highlight. And most importantly, they were fun to make and look at.

First things first, I’m a country boy from a small town in Montana. I spent the first part of my life imagining what the Big City would be like as I sat in fields of prairie grass, visualizing the mountains were skyscrapers on the horizon. I would listen for all the sounds that the city breathes at you on the breeze that chased the birds across the meadow. All the while, living and learning how to appreciate the peacefulness and freedom of the country. I painted the city scapes as I have come to know them after living in for the last 16+ years, fun and full of life, but recalling the skies of back home, expansive, beautiful, and peaceful.

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